Radio's sly Fox

A jock who shocks: Matt Tilley used to unstitch the Fox logos from
his clothes and listens to Jon Faine in his leisure time.

He's been an FM breakfast star for 10 years, but Matt
Tilley is not your average jock, reports Michael
Lallo.

MATT TILLEY isn't holding his breath for a Spicks and
Specks invitation. "I have a certain commercial sensibility
that might not make me welcome," says the co-host of Fox FM's Matt
& Jo Show. "Hamish is always on there, of course, but I'm seen
as part of a different realm. Being an FM brekkie guy can carry a
stigma. I can see how people would put me in a box."

Not that he's complaining. He knows his image is more suburban
dad than edgy stand-up. And it's this image that's seen him notch
up 10 (mostly top-rating) years in the breakfast spot. He's nice.
He's safe. He's an Everybody Loves Raymond kind of
guy.

Except, well, he's not. Or at least there's more to him than
that. He's a qualified lawyer, for one. He listens to Jon Faine.
("Would he find it abhorrent that someone who does my job loves his
show?") Steve Price even tried to lure him to 3AW. Don't think that
he's puffing himself up, though - facts like these have to be
coaxed out.

He's also refreshingly honest about his work. The music he
listens to, the shows he watches, the comedians he sees - rarely
are they the same ones he plugs on air. He even unstitched the Fox
logos from his shirts when he started in the early '90s, lest he
cop any flak from his 3RRR-listening mates.

"I did fret about it," he admits. "But then I realised that no
one was actually questioning whether I'm being true to myself when
I'm mucking around in the studio. My job is to make people laugh -
and I really love doing that."

The show has the usual FM blend of celebrity interviews, gossip,
calls from listeners and personal stories. Tilley's voice
impersonations and "gotcha calls" feature heavily. And it works.
Fox topped the FM ratings when Tilley and former co-host Tracy
Bartram started in 1997. The duo even toppled 3AW at one stage,
snaring almost 19 per cent of listeners. Fox lost ground when
Stanley replaced Bartram in 2003 but Tilley and his new co-host
slogged away until they reached number one and now vie with Nova's
Dave Hughes and Kate Langbroek for top spot. (Last week's survey
saw them reclaim the top over Nova.)

The first thing you notice about Tilley is that off air he's
surprisingly reflective and insightful. Indeed, he's highly
intelligent, says former colleague Michael Veitch, although he
masks it with "a knockabout type of blokiness". He's also one of
the few commercial announcers who doesn't wheel out the "I'm the
same person off air as I am on" line. But he's not about to endorse
any latte-sipper criticisms of FM radio. "Over a million people a
week listen to Fox," Tilley says. "That's half of Melbourne. They
can't all be bogans who like dick jokes."

Nor will he put up with conservatives' claims that his show
"defecates over our values". "Andrew Bolt takes much joy in tearing
into our show," he says. "And this is coming from a bloke who
writes for the lowest common denominator of redneck, reactionary,
unthinking, unsympathetic Australia."

As he sips hot water at his kitchen table, unperturbed by son
Jack's lively impersonation of a pig, he talks about the nature of
the game - celebrity interviews, for instance. Whether it's an
A-list movie star or Z-list Big Brother housemate, Tilley
peppers them with the same cheeky questions. Yet he refuses to
paint himself as a fearless ego-deflator.

"You play with celebrities how they'll let you play," he admits.
"Most of them want me to be (cheeky) because it's to their
advantage to appear just like everyone else. But you don't dictate
the terms. You dance and dance and dance and see what you can get
away with."

The early hours take their toll but they do allow him lots of
time with his kids.

Tilley tends to smile and stare into the distance when speaking
about wife Susie and their children Gracie, 6, Jack, 3 and Oscar,
2. Clearly he's a hands-on dad. He even defies the conventional pop
psychology wisdom that men can't multi-task. At one point he
simultaneously wipes a runny nose, peels an orange and draws a
picture of a cat. And his unpretentious, kid-friendly house belies
its multimillion-dollar price tag.

Family life, of course, has proved a rich source of material for
his show but there were times he threw himself into work to cope
with the unexpected stresses it delivered.

When Susie fell pregnant with Jack, doctors diagnosed a
condition requiring risky in-utero blood transfusions. Jack was
rushed into surgery after a premature birth, enduring a 16-hour
operation. Then he contracted a virus.

"He was so weak," Tilley says softly. "It was touch and go a
couple of times."

The condition recurred with Oscar. Both times, Tilley rented an
apartment near the hospital, rising at 2am to sit by their
humidicribs before going to work. "I'd spent years watching
sick-baby stories on A Current Affair and then it happened
to us," he says. "But the drama of it gets lost because you're
completely consumed by what's happening.

"My number one thing was for me to not let it affect my work -
which was stupid, because as if that's the most important thing.
But in a way, it was my release. It gave me something else to focus
on so I didn't fall apart."

Susie and the boys made a full recovery and Tilley has since
raised more than $400,000 for the Mercy and Royal Women's hospitals
through two CD compilations. The most recent reached number four
nationally - even though the show airs only in Melbourne - and
knocked Madonna off the top spot in Victoria.

Despite such noteworthy achievements, Tilley says he feels like
he just left uni, perhaps because he's been in radio that whole
time.

And his success is even more remarkable given that he never
intended to work in showbiz.

He has fond memories of growing up on the Mornington Peninsula.
He admits to being an "annoying overachiever" at school, excelling
on stage, in the classroom and on the oval. Yet he was the first
prefect to be suspended. (He painted a sheep crossing in front of
his French teacher's house, "because he sounded like a sheep.")

He also lost his job playing Santa at a local shopping centre
after Saint Nick got busted sneaking a sly fag behind Coles.

He enrolled in arts-law, he says, chiefly because he didn't want
to study medicine. The plan was to party his way through uni and
maybe become a barrister. Then a man approached him at a
urinal.

"I was at a mate's 21st birthday," Tilley says, "and he started
critiquing my speech. He asked me if I wanted to do some stuff at
Fox, although they couldn't pay me any money."

Having never listened to breakfast radio in his life, and wary
of the early starts it required, he declined. But Austereo
persisted, and he ended up writing and hosting several
programs.

By 1997, Fox was desperate for a new breakfast crew. After a
failed attempt to team him with Judith Lucy, he partnered Tracy
Bartram.

The show was an instant hit and almost immediately the rumours
began. Tilley is surprised by Bartram's refusal to talk about him
in a Green Guide interview last year.

"There's a certain drama in her saying 'I won't talk about those
times'," he says. "The minute you say something like that, people
start speculating."

He pauses, choosing his words carefully. "Look, it wasn't a
great working environment. She's an unusual person and I think it's
fair to say she was difficult to work with. Whatever her issues and
agendas were, they usually didn't marry with those of everyone
else. She was an unhappy person and that manifested itself in the
opposite of people being sympathetic because she became aggressive.
No one really got along with her. I'm not saying she was always
wrong and we were always right. She just marched to the beat of a
different drum and everyone found that very hard."

In spite of this, Tilley says, they maintained a professional
relationship. It was also a time when his life went "from zero to
100". He married, his radio career took off, and he wrote, appeared
in and hosted several television shows. Some were moderately
successful; others bombed. In particular, The Chat Room -
an imitation-Panel comprising Austereo celebrities - drew
scathing reviews and shockingly low ratings. It's no surprise that
Tilley nominates radio as his true passion.

"I know they sound like the words of someone who's never made it
in telly," he laughs. "But you don't have those same constraints on
radio. You can just do what you want, whereas with television you
have to practice and rehearse and run it by other people
first."

So why is he returning to TV? "This is a little different," he
says of Surprise Surprise Gotcha!, Nine's resurrected
Candid Camera-style program, co-hosted by Jackie O, which started
on Tuesday.

"I don't just run in at the end and say, 'Surprise' - I'm
involved in the set-up (of the pranks). It just seemed like it
would be fun." It's taken a little longer than planned, he admits,
because "there have been a few distractions at Channel Nine".

He's not in any rush, though. He loves his job and has no
intention of leaving. "But I would like to make that decision
before it's made for me," he says. "It's an attrition thing. How
long can I handle the early mornings? Is there something else I'd
like to try? But I'm not a goal-setting, life-plan kind of person.
I'm happy just to keep talking rubbish every morning for as long as
they'll let me."